Washington Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche can hit a baseball farther and more often than almost anyone in the world. But when it comes to launching and running a successful business, he’s just another stressed-out, frustrated entrepreneur. Good thing he’s buddies with Steve Trax.

Trax, who already handles nearly every penny of LaRoche’s considerable baseball earnings, stepped in last year as acting chief financial officer of Buck Commander, a floundering hunting gear-turned-production company LaRoche and five friends founded as a hobby in 2005.

“We couldn’t get it on track,” LaRoche said. “Nobody could wrap their head around the right way to do it.”

With “Traxie,” as they call him, running the business rather than just managing LaRoche’s own startup capital, Buck Commander started to turn profits, producing a cable TV hunting series and selling gear online. All it took, LaRoche says, was someone with financial training to see the big picture, trim some fat and set the right strategy.

In 10 years, Trax has earned LaRoche’s near absolute trust as a friend, hunting and golfing companion and financial adviser. “It turned out to be a really good thing, and we’re going to make money off it,” says LaRoche. “But in the beginning it was just a way to have fun.”

Trax’s company, MTX Wealth Management LLC, handles more than $400 million in investments for a client list comprising mostly professional athletes. In many ways, his business looks and feels a lot like any financial advisory firm: talk about risk, portfolios and the market.

But when your typical client hasn’t yet turned 30 years old, makes millions of dollars and is on the road or in a gym for months at a time while navigating the media fishbowl of pro sports, the business is anything but typical. It can be a grind with unique challenges.

“People think being a professional athlete is glorious and just an easy life,” Trax says rapidly as he leans over a conference table in his Bethesda offices. “Let me tell you, it can be glamorous, but it wears off quickly.”

His own cramped office shows signs of that world-weary glamour: A large, autographed print of former New England Patriots star lineman Matt Light — an item that might anchor a man cave in suburban Boston — sits on the floor, partially obscured by papers and posters.

With clients ranging from teenagers who just signed their first contracts to veterans eyeing retirement, Trax and business partner Nina Mitchell end up enveloping their client’s lives as they advise and guide nearly every dollar.

That means everything from the mundane — making sure a medical bill doesn’t linger in an offseason mailbox — to big business, such as adding more acreage to LaRoche’s growing 3,000-acre Kansas hunting ranch. And the uncomfortable, such as explaining to family members why they can’t get a loan.

Or, like Trax did with LaRoche in 2005, explain to him why it’s a bad idea to invest money with friends on a startup with no business plan. “I would look at that and say 99 times out of 100 it will probably fail,” Trax says. “This has worked out, which has been great, but it also has come with a significant amount of time and effort.”

Trax, 46, set his own path toward financial management for athletes as a star shooter on championship teams at DeMatha Catholic High School and Old Dominion University. He was good enough to win way more often than he lost, but not good enough to play professionally.

So on the advice of his high school coach — “Use the game, don’t let the game use you,” Morgan Wootten told him — Trax parlayed his athletic success into a finance degree and connections, later toiling for nine years as a rank-and-file accountant at Arthur Andersen LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Trax remembers hours far beyond what he was paid for, but confidently insists the broad range of experiences in the accounting salt mines paid off.

In 1999, he hooked up with the sports division of SFX Entertainment Inc., and after eight years of expanding his book of business working under Mitchell, the duo spun off their division into a private company.

Before taking the scary dive into entrepreneurship, the pair spent nearly a year looking at their options, working through long conversations with SunTrust, Morgan Stanley and other crucial contacts they’d need in private practice. They negotiated a price and a window to take clients, and on Feb. 1, 2007, they launched MTX. It was a gut check moment, Trax says.

“As an employee to then a business owner, you had to essentially stare at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘Can I move these guys? Do these guys trust us enough to do this?’” he remembers.

Trust and personal connections undergird the entire business; and the key to that, Trax says, is to keep the athletes on the same level. Don’t treat them like celebrities. When it’s time to tell a star athlete he can’t buy a second house yet, it helps to have a healthy ego and a sense of perspective.

“I’ve always looked at other athletes and said, ‘This guy’s not any better than I am,’” said Trax, who’s kept an athletic build on his 6-foot-4-inch frame over the years. “You try to pick them apart and find a competitive edge, so I think that kind of mentality helps to service these guys.”

The model works on a roughly 15-year cycle. Trax works to develop relationships with young, promising ballplayers who have recently signed their first big contract. As their careers progress, Trax stays by their side, making sure they don’t blow their money and, ideally, find a way to make those millions last.

Today, the business grows almost on its own — LaRoche vouches for Trax any chance he gets in the clubhouse — but in the beginning, it started with a bond forged in his playing days. Retired NBA star Danny Ferry, a childhood friend and DeMatha teammate, helped him climb into the sports world with a phone call.

Ferry, who knew and trusted Trax, also knew and trusted agent David Falk, whose company employed Mitchell as a top financial adviser to clients. Shortly after Falk sold his company to SFX in 1998, Ferry put the two in touch, and with that foothold, Trax developed leads through other agents, who usually refer players to advisers after the deal’s done. Today, Trax starts building that friendship immediately. For instance, most meetings with cash-strapped minor leaguers happen at a fancy restaurant, with Trax footing the bill. Also, LaRoche says, Trax will put up his own money in most new investments he suggests to clients.

In a conversation, Trax uses his hands to illustrate the core challenge of the business. “You have a career,” he says, holding his hands close together to illustrate the short shelf life of a world-class athlete, “that could go like this in a heartbeat.” He nearly clasps his hands, alluding to a major injury. “There’s a lot you can’t control in your business, but you have that career that lasts this long that needs to provide for a lifetime.” He spreads his arms wide.

That takes discipline and conservatism, two assets not often found in star athletes in their early 20s. But it comes more easily in some sports than others, a fact Trax learned the hard way.

He assumed his career would revolve around basketball, considering his background. But basketball’s business model of signing teenagers to large, instantly payable contracts made his clients reluctant to listen to his advice. Baseball, on the other hand, imposes austerity on its players via its minor-league development system. Even the richest stars spend at least a year or two in the minors, making a salary that’s not enough to live on (though the signing bonus can be a different story).

Carefully choosing his words, Trax said he’s dedicated to his clients, but his patience isn’t unlimited — more than once, he cut bait with an uncooperative client intent on profligacy. After several frustrating encounters with men who simply wouldn’t, or couldn’t, follow his budgeting advice, Trax shifted and developed his baseball book of business. Today, he mostly handles baseball and hockey players.

“The challenge is getting the guys to respect the value of the dollar and to understand that this career has got to provide for a lifetime,” Trax said.

Mitchell, 53, was on the management team that first hired Trax at SFX, and after eight years together, she said, it was an easy choice to go out on their own at MTX. They complemented each other well as teammates — he’d bring the ex-jock camaraderie to a client, and she’d bring the stern-yet-devoted mother perspective. “He’s male, and I’m a female. We look at things differently,” she said, adding, “They know I’m not here to talk about what great athletes they are.”

It was a dicey time to start a financial advising firm. The market tanked the following year, and some clients — including Light and Roy Halladay — made the news when a real estate firm they invested in went bankrupt. Trax joined the creditors’ committee and tried to get some money back.

Ultimately, they and their clients weathered the recession in part because the athletes are comparatively low on equity investments, Mitchell said. Trax cites their emphasis on communication. “We didn’t lose one client over that time frame,” Trax said. “I think the reason being we tend to over-inform.”

MTX today is growing, as Trax and Mitchell have created a sustaining referral circle. In the hours before the Nationals clinched a spot in the playoffs Sept. 20, Trax and LaRoche chatted on the field at Nationals Park. Pitchers Tom Gorzelanny and Jordan Zimmerman, two other Trax clients, joined them, as did prospects Tyler Moore and Jesus Flores, who may become clients on LaRoche’s referral.

“It’s a business that can be incredibly shady,” LaRoche says. “And I’ve heard some nightmare stories from ballplayers over the years with things that have happened with their financial guys, and it can be a really touchy subject. But it’s so easy to throw Steve’s name out there.”

Steve Trax

Age: 46

Residence: Vienna

Family: Married, two children

Education: Bachelor of science in accounting and personal financial management, Old Dominion University

Notable: Was the sixth man for the 1983-84 DeMatha Stags high school basketball team that won the “mythical” national championship with a 29-2 record; topped 1,000 points during his career at Old Dominion.